Pastor's Note


Lost Luggage
"Forgive each other, just as the lord has forgiven you."  (Colossians 3:13)

It's happened again.  The airlines have lost your luggage.  The good news is that eventually they almost always find your bag and attempt to send it on to you.  The bad news is the lost luggage has an uncanny sense of timing, managing to show faith.” “living faith.” up just as you are about to head for the airport for your flight home.

Losing your luggage can be one of life's most annoying inconveniences.  Savvy travelers have learned never to check through crucial papers, regularly needed medications or all their “Someone will say, ‘You have a faith and I have work’ socks and underwear.  It's just too risky.

But sometime before we get too far into the New Year we should all make a conscious, exerted effort to "lose our luggage."  Most of us are far more bogged down with baggage than we may even realize.
          How many extra pounds of grudges are you packing around?
          How many handbags of animosity?
          How many flight bags of resentment?

Many of us feel compelled to make New Year's resolutions that we optimistically carry with us into the New Year.  But few of us stop and consider the load we already have packed and ready to go.  The worst we can do is to take these bags bursting with old grudges and unforgiving acts with us into the New Year.

Paul urges his readers to live so thoroughly in Christ that they can finally "put to death" old attitudes and agendas.  Paul offers us specific ways we can achieve this goal.  We are to "clothe" ourselves with "companssion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience."  An active expression of these attitudes is demonstrated when we "forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven us."

This call to forgiveness, Paul declares, is not really an optional request.  Forgiveness isn't something Christians should extend to one another just because it's a "nice" thing to do or because it will promote peace within the body of Christ. Paul makes the connection between divine forgiveness and human acts of forgiveness a bit more explicit than that.  Paul insists that ". . . as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."

Forgiveness is not something we "owe" each other.  Forgiveness is not something we can truly "offer" each other.  We have the capacity for forgiveness only because God has first forgiven us.  Without first experiencing God's forgiveness in our lives, we have nothing to offer anyone else.  Forgiveness is turning to our forgiving God in worship and praise and offering ourselves and all our loathsome luggage to God.  It is God who forgives, and as we worship God, it is the divine forgiveness that pours through us and fills us with a forgiving spirit.  We must depend on God to take our baggage and to send it to a destination where it will never find us again.

Go in Peace, Serve the Lord!